British cinematographer Barry Ackroyd came up in the world of documentaries, which made him an invaluable collaborator for Kathryn Bigelow on “The Hurt Locker,” where the whole point of the camera work is immediacy and naturalism. Shooting on defiantly low-tech Super 16 and covering the action with as many as four cameras at a time, Ackroyd managed to thrust viewers into a stark, chaotic landscape, capturing everything from huge panoramas to the smallest glances.
One of the film’s many Oscar nominees, Ackroyd talked about the grueling shoot in a recent phone conversation from London.
(Photo by Jonathan Olley)
Shooting in the Middle East in summer must have brought both creative and physical challenges. Were you aware going in what a tough shoot it was going to be?
Yes, and I think I played a part in the decision to do it that way. Kathryn called me because she’d seen “United 93,” and although that was shot mostly on a sound stage in London, I think she could sense the physical element of it. She said she wanted to shoot in Jordan, as close as we can get to the real place, to make the location a character in the film, really.
And I was more than pleased. I’d done a lot of documentaries, and I knew what the conditions would be like. I realized it would be hot and tough, but that’s part of the filmmaking process if you’re gonna try and get close to the truth.
What appealed to you about the project?
Great script, great director. And it’s the genre that I’ve always liked, and I strive for. In documentaries, we went all around the world to look at and experience things, and then to try to show the world exactly what it’s like to be in this situation.
And this was the same thing. It was exactly like if someone said, “We’re going to make a documentary about the guys who do this work. How do you achieve that?”
So how do you achieve it?
You strip way some of the artifice of making a film. You don’t need crane shots, you don’t need special equipment. What you need is the simplest equipment, and a good eye.
I worked to reduce the technical side right down to its basics. A simple 16-mil camera, sound recording, good design, and all the things that make the thing feel real. And from that you find the story. And Kathryn and I connected very closely on that, even though we didn’t have our first meeting until we got to Jordan.
You might use some documentary techniques, but there have to be significant differences as well.
Of course. That’s the nature of feature filmmaking. The downside is that a feature film can try to get real, but because there’s so much stuff in the way, you can never get completely real. The upside is that in a documentary you might only have one chance to catch every moment, but in a feature film you can have many chances of doing it.
